Long-term memory is essential to feel like a continuous being, and to be able to interact/communicate coherently. Social robots need long-term memories in order to establish long-term relationships with humans and other robots, and do not act just for the moment. In this paper this challenge is highlighted, open questions are identified, the need of addressing this challenge in the RoboCup@Home League with new tests is motivated, and a new test is proposed.

RoboCup is an international scientific initiative with the goal to advance the state of the art of intelligent robots. Established in 1997, the original mission was to field a team of robots capable of winning against the human soccer World Cup champions by 2050. To celebrate 20 years of RoboCup, the Federation is launching a video series featuring each of the leagues with one short video for those who just want a taster, and one long video for the full story. Robohub will be featuring one league every week leading up to RoboCup 2017 in Nagoya, Japan. This week, we consider being part of the RoboCup@Home league.